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Dark Souls 1 Soul Level Restrictions
Restrictions on Soul Level of the character reduces your survivability, damage and weapon choice. Partial restrictions You can avoid levelling hp and get the "glass cannon build" (fun, but not that challenging), or level only hp and get what can be called a "practice build" where you allowed to do many mistakes and have more time to learn boss movements before it dies. Both builds are rather fun, but not that challenging, thereby going for the lowest level possible is recommended. No Leveling Challenge To do this challenge you pick a class you like and never level. You will get different stats depending on the class. The most important stats here are Strength (str), Dexterity (dex), Intelligence (int), Faith and Attunement (Slots) - they determine which weapons and spells you can use. Check a wiki to learn what is available with which stats. Note, if you lack an attunement slot, you still can use spells with White Seance and Darkmoon Seance Rings. Soul Level 1 Challenge To do this challenge you must pick Pyromancer class and never level. Since Soul level 1 (SL1) is the lowest possible level in the game, thereby it is the most common among all other level restrictions. Note, that doesn't mean that SL1 is objectively the hardest no levelling challenge, for example, pyromancy is arguably the most powerful weapon at low level and SL4 classes can hardly use it. Pros and Cons What is challenging * Low health bar, i.e. you need to use rolls more actively and precisely. * Low stamina bar, i.e. you need to pay attention to it. * Limited weapon choice. No big weapons are available due to lack of strength. * Lower physical damage due to lack of strength and dexterity. * Low equipment load, i.e. need to avoid heavy gear. Advantages of SL1 * You can use pyromancy at it's full power. * A lot of free souls for early upgrades and purchases. Viable gear Melee weapons * Reinforced Club - best damage in most cases. * Blacksmith Giant Hammer - best reach (10% more than the club), plus best damage agains enemies with low lightning resistance. * Hand Axe - flexible weapon with respect to speed. It is faster weapon, so you have more opportunities for attacking; meanwhile it's strong attack is as fast as light attack of the club and even does a bit more damage, at the cost of much higher stamina consumption. * Dagger - the best speed, but lacks damage, so very situational. * Battle Axe - it is objectively worser than all other choices with respect to speed, damage and reach, but not significantly, so still is quite viable. Weapon upgrades * Chaos+5 - the best option in most cases if you have 10 humanities. * Normal+15 - only with Reinforced club, the best option in some cases, for DCL bosses, for example. Also allows to apply buffs. * Lightning+5 - the easiest to do, since you don't need 2nd ember. Spells * Great Combustion - Best damage, cast speed, and stagger-ability. But low amount of uses. * Combustion - Lower damage, but twice more uses. * Great fireball - Lower cast speed, but higher range and damage comparing to Combustion. * Power within - to buff your damage very significantly, see Buffs section below and Hyper mode. Rings * Dark Wood Grain Ring - for more invulnerability frames. * FaP - allows you to survive most of the attacks, more stamina is also very convenient to have. * Cloranthy - for stamina recovery. * RTSR - can increase your damage by factor 2-3. * Dusk Crown - for Hyper mode, which lets you to increase damage even further. Or for more Pyro uses. * Fog - for Nito skeletons (see below) and can help with Capra dogs. * Slumbering - together with For Ring let you avoid fighting skeletons at Nito. * Wolf - can help to deal with Capra dogs and run by ghosts to Ingward. * Rust - can help to deal with Hydra and pass Blighttown lake. * Bellowing Dragoncrest - for Pyro damage boost. Shields * Grass Crest - for stamina recovery. * Sanctus - for health recovery in Hyper mode. * Any other not heavy shield to block. For example, Heater shield. Armor * Mask of the Child - for stamina recovery. * Any kind of light armor - can help to tank some specific boss attacks. For example, Crimson armor. * Crown of Dusk - for pyro damage boost. Buffs * Power Within - for factor of ~2 damage boost. * Green Blossom - for stamina recovery (mainly useful for 4 Kings, Gwyn and Butterfly) * Pine resin - to use with a Normal+15 weapon. Useful techniques The main difference between a usual and SL1 run is that you have much less stamina. Here are a few advices on stamina management: * Rolling consumes less stamina than blocking, and vast majority of attacks in DS1 are dodgeable with rolls. Thereby it is recommended to do No Shield run before SL1. * Block before rolling. If you are a bit late the boss will hit your shield, not body, and if you roll in time it will cost you nothing. * Sprinting consumes even less stamina. There are a lot of opportunities to replace rolling by sprinting, look for them. * Strafing (jogging) is even more preferable, since you recover stamina during that. So you can attack, reposition yourself to be safe from next boss attack, and attack again performing with maximum dps. Very useful for 4 Kings. * Be creative. After different boss attacks you'll get different openings (if any). Try to figure out a specific attack plan for each opening. Let's suppose you have a reasonable opening after boss attack, here are your options: ** do 2 light attacks; ** do 1 strong attack; ** do 1 light attack and fully recover stamina; ** don't attack at all and reposition yourself for a long attack series from a safe place; ** move just a bit to make next dodge easier and then attack once, strafe, attack again; ** recover stamina first and only then attack. This can help you to avoid full stamina depletion and thereby lower recovery speed. ** do 1 running attack (for more damage than light) and follow up with light; ** do a jump attack to slightly reposition yourself. Route advices Melee run with Reinforced Club+15 #'Reinforced Club'. After Asylum go to Undead burg and drop through the barrels to pick Rubbish. Buy the club from Male merchant, who is behind two spear men. #'+5 Weapon'. Head straight to Andre and buy titanite. Optimally you would go through Valley of Drakes and pick three souls, RTSR and Grass Crest Shield along your way, but Taurus is not that hard so you can choose to go the standard way. You should kill Tower shield knight to get 2 more titanites and Fire Keeper Soul. Then go to New Londo ruins, pick another easy Soul and homeward back to get Flask+2. #'Capra'. Kill Capra now since you can't upgrade your weapon further anyway. #'+8 Weapon'. Get Large Ember and go towards Blighttown. The easiest way is through Valley of Drakes, but if you go through Depths you can pick 1 Large shard behind the Mage. There are two Large shards in the Blighttown lake, plus you can farm them from the leeches. Then go to the Hollow tree and pick Cloranthy ring and 2 chunks, one near the ring and one on a mushroom further below. You can kill Lizzards there as well for very good chance of titanite drop. Also you should get Crimson Armor near Blight town exit, or Gold Hemmed after Ceaseless. At this step you have three alternatives, you can either kill Quelaag with +5 weapon (she is not that hard), or after the mage go to Andre and get +6 weapon and smithbox to get +8 for Quelaag, or after Blighttown visit Andre and come back to Quelaag. #'Quelaag & Gargoyles'. Kill them now since you can't upgrade your weapon further anyway. If you want FaP ring kill Lautrec before ringing second bell. #'+10 Weapon'. Pick 6 more large titanite at Sen's and buy 1-2 more at the Crestfallen Merchant (he sells Green Blossom as well). Pick Slumbering ring, if you want to cheese Nito. #'+14 Weapon'. Kill 2 Giants at Sen's, then come back for 2 Black Knights in Burg, and trade Rubbish with the crows. Go to New Londo, kill Ingward, and get Very Large ember. Upgrade the club. At this step you have several alternatives. First, you can skip few chunks above if you get 2 chunks in the chests in New Londo. Second, if you are fine with a bit lower damage you can skip one chunk and pick it after near the giant blacksmith. If you were lucky with crystal lizzards you can skip even more chunks. #'+15 Weapon'. Kill Stray Demon and upgrade the club. #Win. From that point you are good to go wherever you like and kill the rest of 21 bosses. I would recommend going for O&S and upgrading Crimson armor. Then go for Nito to buy Child mask from Patches. Then for DLC to get Pine Resin. Melee run with Chaos Reinforced Club+5 Here are the main changes comparing to the previous route: #Before the Hollow tree pick 1 Green Titanite. Then in the tree there are two Red Chunks, one is near Cloranthy and one is near the basilisks (need to drop from above). Note, Leeches drop Green Titanite in packs of 5, but this is uncommon drop. #After Quelaag kill Ceasless and pick Chaos Flame Ember, in the lava behind minor Tauruses. #In Sen's ignore large titanite and buy Green shards to have 9 in total. Pick Golden Serpent ring for farming. #Go to Catacombs drop to Vamos, pick 1 green shard before the final drop, and get Chaos+1 club and smithbox. You should get only the very top bonfire and homeward all the way back. #'Chaos+3 Weapon'. Go to Asylum, trade Pyromancy Flame and kill 2 Black Knights. You should also kill Stray, since he's easy. #Then kill Iron Golem, O&S, Fire Sage, Centipede to get into Lost Izalith. #'Chaos+5 Weapon'. Go to the poison pit. 1 Red Chunk is on one of the three corpses near bunch of Chaos Eaters. Slab in the chest nearby. Another Red Chunk is after the stairs from the pit, on an elevation with a lonely Chaos Eather. The last one you'll need to farm from Chaos Eaters or the lizzard behind the Titanite Demon (don't forget to use 10 humanities and Serpent ring for farming). # If you like you can also buy 10 Twinklings and kill Giant blacksmith to get Blacksmith Giant Hammer+5 for fire resistant enemies like Fire Sage and Centipede. Or even get Reinforced Club+15 to make DLC a bit easier and be safe in case if you run out of humanities. Pyromancy run TODO Prominent challenges with the Soul Level restriction * SL1 0 Hit Run * SL1 NG+7 No Rolling/Blocking/Parrying * SL1 NG+7 Fresh Start * TODO Category:Restrictions Category:Dark Souls 1